“Again I realized how swift is motion in Mars.  We wished to reach the City, and we glided to it by the rapid propulsion of desire.  The broad way was filled with lines and groups of peoples clustering to the hilltop—­and over the far-reaching slopes I could see the awaiting throngs.  My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I could discern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded a wisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of phosphorescence, behind it.

“The glory of the City fell around us now; we were in its broad streets beneath the towering pillars of light that framed them in a fence of splendor.  On we pressed, but I glanced from side to side, noting the great glass houses and buildings, here colonnades of translucent opalescent beauty, made up of hollow tubes of glass holding an interior illumination, and clambered over by vines whose expanding leaves formed a tracery of silhouettes upon their sides.

“Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-like squares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I have described, which hung lamp-like in the sky,—­past palaces and arcades, blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts of white opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which we plunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares of black umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heat quivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwined filagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the huge glass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops’ eyes in the night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture, which this great City embodied.

“It was a strange bewilderment of marvels, and from it all, as if it were its interior motive and cause, sprang light.  It was electric in origin, conveyed in some peculiar manner from a great source of power, in the high falls of Zenapa, near the City.  But this I learned later.

“I divined that we were approaching the center of the city.  Soon, indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I had descried from the hill of Observation at the locks.  Here it is, that the great plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of the Pan-Tan are held.  It was a seraphic, astounding picture.  It rose in the midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light, purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation.  How wonderful!  I stopped.  For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upon a miracle of constructive and decorative art.  One hundred columns of red glass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glass arches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire.  From the pillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets, carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandeliers were at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of light thus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent.